This invention relates to a medical treatment system. More particularly, this invention relates to a medical treatment system with scanner input. Even more particularly, this invention relates to an automatic treatment system with control based upon scanner input. This invention also relates to an associated method.
Substantial advances have been made in the last twenty years in ascertaining internal organic structures without surgery. CAT scanners and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging devices, as well as ultrasonography, have provided the physician with powerful tools for use in diagnosing patients. For the most part, these scanners have been used solely in medical examinations and diagnosis. However, radiological treatment of brain tumors has used imaging equipment to locate target tumors and to direct radiation to the target location. In addition, U.S. Pat. No. 5,207,223 discloses the directing of a necrosis-causing X-ray beam to cancerous target tissues upon the locating of the target tissues by the comparison, with reference data, of electronic images garnished by diagnostic beams.
Such radiation-utilizing noninvasive surgical procedures have been limited to the treatment of tumorous growths. It would be enormously beneficial to the medical industry and to many patients if such noninvasive surgical techniques were available to treat other kinds of other kinds of tissues (e.g., otherwise healthy tissues) in other kinds of surgical procedures.